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Information AboutEndangered Species Act |
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ESA is administered by two federal agencies, the Fish And Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries (formerly the National Marine Fisheries Service ). NOAA Fisheries handles marine species, and the FWS has responsibility over freshwater fishes and all other species. The FWS has set up an Endangered Species Program that evolves habitat conservation plans intended to coordinate the requirements of species and corporate and private owners of essential habitat. The Act was passed in the wake of a 1973 conference in Washington DC that led to the signing of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora ( CITES ), which restricted international commerce in plant and animal species believed to be actually or potentially harmed by trade. Listing A species can be listed via two mechanisms. The first is for the FWS or NMFS to take the initiative and directly list the species. The second way is via individual or organizational petition. There are two categories on the list, endangered and threatened. Endangered Species are closer to Extinction than Threatened Species . A third status is that of "candidate species". Under this status, the FWS has concluded that listing is warranted but immediate listing is precluded due to other priorities (limited time, perhaps political pressure to delay listing). It is illegal to harm (harm includes the adverse modification of a species habitat), buy, sell or trade listed species. The penalties for violating the Endangered Species Act can be as serious as a $50,000 fine and up to a year in jail. Further, the FWS develops a plan to help the listed species recover, and it designates "critical habitats." The ESA defines Endangered Species Act, critical habitat as "the specific areas within the geographic area occupied by a species on which are found those physical and biological features essential to the conservation of the species, and that may require special management considerations or protection; and specific areas outside the geographic area occupied by a species at the time it is listed, upon determination that suchareas are essential for the conservation of the species." The Environmental Protection Agency bases decisions to register a pesticide in part on the risk of adverse effects on endangered species as well as its environmental fate, its effect in the ecosystem. There is debate on the effectiveness of the ESA. Defenders of the ESA argue that it has been enormously successful at preventing extinctions. They argue that between 98-99% of species protected by the law have been preserved from extinction and that the United States would have experienced an order of magnitude more extinctions but for the protective provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Critics of the ESA argue that the Act has not accomplished its stated goal--the recovery of endangered species. Since 1973, only 33 species have been delisted, seven because they went extinct and 12 more because they should not have been listed in the first place. Six more may be cases of data error, which is certainly the case with the gray whale and American alligator. The brown pelican’s and Arctic peregrine falcon’s recoveries have far more to do with the ban on the insecticide DDT than with the Endangered Species Act. The Act contains a citizen suit clause. The clause allows citizens to sue the government to enforce the law. Criticisms While Endangered Species Act has not been a failure, it certainly has not been a success either. If ESA worked as intended, preservation should eventually demote those species on Endangered list to Threatened list, and evenually off Threatned list too. That, however, has not been the case. One of the main reasons of ESA has not been a success is that private citizens often have to carry undue cost of protecting endangered species. When ESA was initially passed in 1970s, legislators felt that cost or revenue potentional should not be a concern for preservation of endangered species. In essense, this meant that, if an endangered species was found in one's private land, one would not be able to use that land no matter how much revenues could be generated from using the land, for using the land destroys the habitat of an endangered species. Thus, ESA gives incentives to people to kill the endangered species if they find it on their land, before anybody else does. Therefore, Threatened species are usually escalated to Endangered list, and occasionally -- but fortunately, not often -- some are removed from Endangered list altogether because they become extinct. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, this phenomenon has been increasing accepted by legislature. Changes to ESA, however, has not been made yet. Natural resource economists have proposed that the government offer financial assistance to people whose land is a habitat of an endangered species. Such financial assitance is meant to compensate these people's Opportunity Cost , or for forgoing money they could have made by using the land, and thus to share financial burden for preservation among many people. Another option is to re-create equally habitable place for the species somewhere else if land is to be used. However, such Reclamation of habitats are often opposed by enviromentalists because any disturbance to a species' habitat is a threat to its livelihood. External links
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